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by nowhere_dawn_death_phan



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22721560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowhere_dawn_death_phan/pseuds/nowhere_dawn_death_phan
Summary: John’s gotten used to not having anywhere to call home, until he meets Sherlock. Suddenly, he’s found a place where he belongs, but it seems he’s doomed to never truly settle anywhere. A few snapshots of home, and what it means to Watson - be it Baker Street or elsewhere.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Home

The first night John Watson slept away from Baker Street, he didn’t actually make it through the night. Mrs Hudson opened the front door at eleven pm and found him sat dithering on the steps in the pouring rain, barefoot, with his jacket on inside out, sobbing louder than she’d ever heard him before.  
The most surprising part was that Sherlock wasn’t even slightly surprised when he came down into the study the next morning to find Watson curled up asleep on the sofa underneath two of Mrs Hudson’s blankets with the fire raging in the hearth - he supposed he hadn’t expected any less.

\-----------

The second night John Watson slept away from Baker Street, he at least made it past midnight before ending back up where he’d started.  
At Holmes’s request, Mary had hidden the door key so Watson couldn’t get out the front - he’d climbed through the window instead.  
If you’d asked him to explain it, he wouldn’t have known how to. It just didn’t feel right, to not be there with Holmes. He wasn’t scared, at least he didn’t think he was. It was just an impulse. He had to get out of that small house full of things that weren’t fully his; not yet at least.  
Holmes walked into the study that morning to find Watson lying on his stomach on the rug in front of the fire, a blanket thrown across him, watching the glowing embers with indifference in his eyes.

\-------------

Baker Street didn’t feel like home anymore. He stood in the centre of the room, looking around him. Everything was exactly as he’d left it the day before his wedding. Gladstone was asleep in Sherlock’s armchair, there was a trail of cravats and neckties leading to the other side of the room - ones that Holmes had taken off that had never made it back to the wardrobe.  
And the thing that Watson had been trying to ignore most; Sherlock’s diorama. That tangled mess of red string and newspaper that stretched across the entirely of what had once been his office space. The thing that caused this whole mess in the first place.

In a moment he’s crossed the room and torn his way through the strands of chaos and suspicion, yanking board pins from the walls and scattering notes and clippings like chaff.  
He reaches the photo of Moriarty that sits, smirking smugly out at him from behind that monochrome facade, and he pulls it from the wall, though it catches and tears entirely down the middle.  
He allows that picture to fall between his fingers, and resists the urge to grind it under his boot and spit on it, to curse out the professor for all the misery and horror he’d caused.  
Instead he sinks to his knees, reaches blindly out for whatever’s closest to him for support, and ends up sobbing into the tabletop with Holmes’s violin clutched to his chest until his vision blurs and he can’t tell one photo framed on the wall from another.

\--------------

Somebody else lives in Baker Street now, he thinks. It only makes sense they would, that those rooms wouldn’t stay empty for long. He misses those rooms, on occasion. Tonight is one of those.  
It’s quiet without Mary; too quiet. He likes the quiet, or at least he thought he did. He once said to Holmes he didn’t want a life of adventure in London; he wanted normality. He’d give anything for an adventure right about now.  
The house is cold. The moon shines somewhere outside the window. A cab clatters past. There are whistles and jeers as drunken sots stagger homewards. The world carries on. The Earth turns. The sun hasn’t stopped its rotation because his universe has fallen apart. Does the sun even rotate? He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t care.  
The earth continues to trundle contentedly on it’s axis, but sat in a musty armchair in the corner of a house he’s never felt comfortable in; John Watson is suspended in time, frozen in the realisation he doesn’t have a place to call home anymore.

\-----------

Perhaps he’s had too much to drink. This revelation occurs to him only once he’s lying with his head in Sherlock’s lap, praying for the world to stop spinning for long enough for Watson to confirm he’s real. That Sherlock’s really here. That he’s alive. After all these years. He’s alive.  
His mouth is running off without him; his brain still two conversations behind. Sherlock says something and Watson laughs, though he’s not sure if he’s supposed to.  
He’s not drunk. He’s not. It’s quiet both inside his head and outside, but he likes it. It’s the kind of quiet that means more than words.  
Sherlock’s hands comb through John’s hair. It’s longer than it was; unruly. He’s let himself slip since Mary’s death; he’ll admit it. He’s always been honest about that sort of thing; at least where Holmes is concerned. He’d work it out in a second anyway, it’d be an insult to both of their intelligence’s to lie.

Baker Street is warm. The fire crackles happily in the hearth as if it’s welcoming them back - it’s the first time Watson’s set foot in here in years.  
It’s like slipping back into an old routine; a habit he can’t deny, only this one does him more good than harm. This one means the most.  
He tries to express this sentiment, but flowery and romantic as his missives usually are; this time the words won’t come.  
Holmes sits him up carefully with an arm around his chest- he’d forgotten how gentle those hands were, but yet at the same time so safe - and looks at him with a mingled interest and concern. “Perhaps we’d best get you home.”  
This sentence comes naturally. Comes as though he’d been waiting to say it his whole life.  
“I am home.”  
Sherlock doesn’t say anything, just slides his hand under Watson’s chin and rubs a tender thumb across his cheek. “That you are, John. That you are.”


End file.
